Oscar winner Jonathan Demme is such a big supporter of Morocco’s entry in the 2014 Academy Awards Best Foreign Film field that he’s presenting Horses of God for US distribution. Director Nabil Ayouch’s film has had a successful film festival run, winning the Golden Spike in Spain, Best Director in Seattle, and the Francois Chalais Prize at Cannes.
“Horses of God is simply one of the very most powerful pictures that I have ever seen. Extraordinarily gripping and moving, the cinematic style is really breathtaking. I can’t remember being so blown away by the marriage of visuals and story-telling since the first time I saw Marty Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Bertolucci’s The Conformist way back then. Along with the Jacob Burns Film Center, I am tremendously proud to be a part of bringing this vitally important film to America, beginning with its special screening at the Austin Film Festival this month. It came as no surprise to me when Morocco selected Horses of God as its entry for the Oscars last month, it is such an amazing movie,” said Demme.
Ayouch said, “Jonathan Demme is one of the masters of contemporary American cinema, and The Silence of the Lambs remains for me an inexhaustible source of inspiration. I am proud that Jonathan decided to present Horses of God in the United States. Today more than ever, the American audience needs to listen to another voice on a phenomenon as sensitive as terrorism. Violence has a source, and these children of the shanty towns of Casablanca are there to remind us of it.”
Details on Horses of God [Courtesy of the Seattle Film Festival]:
In Horses of God, Nabil Ayouch tells the story of two young soccer-loving friends, Yachine and Nabil, growing up under the fierce protection of Yachine’s older brother, Hamid. But in the sprawling slums of Sidi Moumen, not even Hamid can defend them against the harshness and injustice of the life that surrounds them. Fed up with that life, Hamid throws a rock at a police car and earns himself two years in prison.
When he returns, an eerie calm masks his newfound zealotry, and his fundamentalist friends seem to exercise a powerful influence. Inspired by the real-life 2003 terrorist attacks in Casablanca, Ayouch’s film is a thoughtful and affecting inquiry into how ordinary people come to do desperate, unfathomable things.
